Last week
Time Warner vice chairman apologized for joking that Polish
soldieres clear mines with their feet. In fact, a Polish officer
invented the first practical electronic mine detector during World
War II. In the winter of 1941-42, the British War Office
invited designs for a robust and reliable mine detector.
The one they adopted was submitted anonymously by Lieut.
Jozef Stanislaw Kozacki, a signals officer with the 1st
Polish Army Corps stationed in Scotland following the German defeat
of Poland in 1939. His invention was tested and developed
and 500 Mine Detectors No. 2 (Polish) were rushed to the
Western Desert in time for the advance on El Alamein. Their
effect was to double the speed of British troops through the heavily
mined sands from 100 to 200 meters an hour.
The same basic design continued in use for 50 years and last saw
the action with British forces during the 1991 Gulf
War.

From: "The
History of Landmines" by Mike Croll(MRC329@aol.com),
first published in Great Britain in 1998 by Leo Cooper,
an imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 47 Church Street,
Barnsley S270 2AS, ISBN 0 85052 268 0: Page 54:
(discussing the 350,000 mines laid on the English beaches to deter
an invasion)

"The mining of the beaches had several unexpected consequences.
As the defence of Britain became more organized it became
necessary to move or to re-lay minefields. The laying of the original
fields was so poor that entirely new methods of clearance, laying
and accurate recording had to be devised. The difficulties of
locating buried mines in the shifting sands of the beach
prompted the War Office to issue specifications for a mine detector
during the winter of 1941/42. The design accepted was submitted
by Lieutenant Jozef Stanislaw Kozacki, a Polish signals officer
who had escaped to France and then to Britain in 1940.

The Polish detector
had two coils, one of which was connected to anoscillator which generated
an oscillating current of an acoustic frequency. The other coil
was connected to an amplifier and a telephone. When the coils
came into proximity to a metallic object the balance between the
coils was upset and the telephone reported a signal. The equipment
weighed just under 30 pounds and could be operated by one man.
The Polish detector saw service throughout the war and the Mark
4c version was still used by the British Army until 1995. The
experience of mine warfare gained on the Home Front was to prove
useful throughout the war. While the Germans dominated mine design
and mine laying, the British were the great innovators in clearance
techniques, initially as a result of their own shortsightedness."

The below text is
from the book "THE POLISH CONTRIBUTIONTO THE ULTIMATE
ALLIED VICTORY IN THE SECOND WORLDWAR" by Tadeusz
Modelski:

Page 221:"The thirteenth Polish
invention: at the end of 1941, the technicalunit of the Polish
General Staff in London introduced the BritishMinistry of War production
to a new improved model (the oldmodel was invented
in Poland in 1937) of the mine detectorconstructed in Scotland
in 1941 by the Polish engineer, J. Kosacki.The British authorities
accepted it as the best one of its time,praising the Poles,
and ordered mass production, under the nameof "Mine Detector Polish
Mark I". All of the British Army wasissued with the detector;
500 mine detectors were used by GeneralB. Montgomery's Eight
Army, to clear the terrain before the ElAlamein attack."

Polish Mine Detector

This name
was given during World War II by the allied forces to a
contraption invented by a recently deceased polish engineer Jozef
Kosacki.
His friend Jan Zakrzewski, who was an officer in the Polish Communication
Training Center in St. Andrews in Scotland told this
story to the press. He said: „Kosacki, while still in
Poland, was researching radio waves, he came up with the
idea of a machine which would find hidden in the ground
metal items. In St. Andrews he was given a laboratory and a sergeant
as an aide. He showed me what he constructed. It looked like a
small box with an antenna. His research became an interest of
the commanding officers of the British Army. All those, who knew,
what he has been working on, were obliged to sign a secrecy agreement.
One day, Kosacki was called to London. Experts agreed that production
must be started immediately. Kosacki's mine detectors were already
used in the North African campaign. His discovery was not patented;
he gave it as a gift to the British Army. He was given a thank
you letter from the king for this. The English were very happy
that they could bring something to the cooperation table with
the Americans that they did not have."